Pavlo Zahrebelnyi: memories of colleagues

In the story, poet and translator Ivan Drach, literary critic Yurii Kovaliv, and actress Olha Sumska share their memories of Pavlo Zahrebelnyi.

Pavlo Zahrebelnyi was born on August 25, 1924, in the village of Soloshyne in the Poltava region. In June 1941, he volunteered for the army and participated in the defense of Kyiv from the Nazis. After being wounded for the second time in 1942, he was taken prisoner and held in concentration camps until February 1945.

In 1951, he graduated from the Faculty of Philology at Dnipro State University. Later he worked as a consultant for the Dnipro branch of the Writers' Union of Ukraine. From 1961 to 1963 he was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Literary Ukraine.

He headed the Writers' Union of Ukraine from 1979 to 1986.

Pavlo Zahrebelnyi died on February 3, 2009.